Which is the best lossless codec?

That you only have to worry about tagging the files in a supposed lossless/lossy library once, not a second time, as it would be the case with one consisting of say, FLAC and MP3.

it's actually very easy to manage tags across a lossless/lossy collection using foobar2000. you can copy/paste from one set of files to another with ease. obviously it's imperative that each set are in the exact same order. i'm pretty sure only it only updates files where differences have been found, even if you do you whole collection at once.

Which is the best lossless codec?

Having two allowed (by which I mean the official software and plugins support it) tagging schemes means that you can have two sets at once. Different versions of ID3 alone can give problems, see this topic, especially post #6. I think it's quite a downside to have two possibly conflicting versions of tags in one file.

Which is the best lossless codec?

I've noticed some editing which I do not find reasonable, so I'd like to discuss it. A while ago, I removed TTA from the main section of the mentioned wiki page because it doesn't seem to attract much attention (at least not at HA). The edit summary: Stripped table from and shortened text about Shorten, LA, TTA, ALS, SLS and Real Lossless

Recently, a TTA dev (Ald) has added it to the table again, but added an extra row with the feature "Password protection". I subsequently removed this, because it is only a minor feature that is supported by only one codec. There are other features much more noteworthy like cuesheet embedding and having an MD5 hash for security. Furthermore, I sorted the table on popularity.

Apparently the TTA dev didn't agree, because the changes were undone. Furthermore, the flexibility of TTA was named 'adaptive', which is just an eufemism for not having any options, which is what the flexibility means.

What do you think? Should I go ahead and undo Ald's undo-edits? It starts to look like edit-warring

Which is the best lossless codec?

Apparently the TTA dev didn't agree, because the changes were undone. Furthermore, the flexibility of TTA was named 'adaptive', which is just an eufemism for not having any options, which is what the flexibility means.

I'm not sure I'd rate "flexibility" on a good or bad scale the same way that decoding speed or compression ratio are. FLAC encoding has a lot of tunable parameters whereas ALAC has nearly no tunable parameters and TTA has none at all. But I wouldn't consider the presence of lots of possible encoding knobs to necessarily be a virtue or the lack of them to be a fault.

Which is the best lossless codec?

But I wouldn't consider the presence of lots of possible encoding knobs to necessarily be a virtue or the lack of them to be a fault.

Why?

If you don't like buttons, you can use all codecs without them. FLAC will default to compression level 5. So I wonder, how do you think having more options, and thus more flexibility, can be a bad thing? Just because it might frighten people to do something wrong?

I agree, that a codec like OptimFROG has so many options and combinations of them (if I set mode, should I set optimize as well? Which combination is best? etc.) but most codecs have a relatively simple system for this.

Which is the best lossless codec?

If you don't like buttons, you can use all codecs without them. FLAC will default to compression level 5. So I wonder, how do you think having more options, and thus more flexibility, can be a bad thing? Just because it might frighten people to do something wrong?

I agree, that a codec like OptimFROG has so many options and combinations of them (if I set mode, should I set optimize as well? Which combination is best? etc.) but most codecs have a relatively simple system for this.

I just think that the effects of flexibility are more important than the presence of flexibility. Like it's noteworthy that FLAC offers a tradeoff between encoding speed and compression ratio, but I wouldn't hold a lack of options against some hypothetical codec that doesn't offer any tune-able parameters but compresses very well.

Which is the best lossless codec?

I just think that the effects of flexibility are more important than the presence of flexibility.

Those possible effects are already mentioned in the table: compression and speed are mentioned at the top. TTA chose to be inflexible, and I might compress better/faster because of this tradeoff (less development time needed tuning, less format header for different modes etc.) So, yes, not being flexible might be a advantage for a codec, but that advantage is already clearly visible someplace else in the table.

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but I wouldn't hold a lack of options against some hypothetical codec that doesn't offer any tune-able parameters but compresses very well.

In that case, just ignore that row in the table. That is no reason not to leave it in for others to take into account, right?

Which is the best lossless codec?

Following on from this discussion, in particular regarding error detection:

If I first rip a CD (with errors) to an ALAC file, I understand:

-there is no checksum error detection.-with errors, the ALAC file may stop playing.

If I then convert the ALAC file to a FLAC file:

-will the new FLAC file have the checksum data present (or have I lost this capability since the file was once ALAC)?-will the new FLAC file be able to play through the errors (or again since it was once ALAC, will this capability be lost)?

This will help me decide if I can encode in ALAC and then at a later date, convert to FLAC (and re-gain error detection capabilities).

-will the new FLAC file have the checksum data present (or have I lost this capability since the file was once ALAC)?-will the new FLAC file be able to play through the errors (or again since it was once ALAC, will this capability be lost)?

The new FLAC file will have a checksum, but the checksum will match the corrupt audio and not the original CD. You will be able to detect if any further corruption affects the FLAC file, but not corruption from before it was encoded to FLAC.

The new FLAC file won't have any errors to play through. It will contain a perfect copy of whatever audio you are able to get out of the ALAC file. If the ALAC file cuts short due to an error, the FLAC file will simply end there.

Which is the best lossless codec?

-there is no checksum error detection.-with errors, the ALAC file may stop playing.

You mean, the CD has errors making the ripping process stop midway in a track? Then no matter what format you choose, you will get a technically valid signal which is whatever the ripper managed to get out of the CD (with all those errors).

Which is the best lossless codec?

A while ago, I removed TTA from the main section of the mentioned wiki page because it doesn't seem to attract much attention (at least not at HA). The edit summary: Stripped table from and shortened text about Shorten, LA, TTA, ALS, SLS and Real Lossless

Hi, KTF! Why are you trying to remove TTA project? If you don't like it? Why? You wrote: "Sorted table on popularity", but it's not true. I have no such statistics. The codec have a good download statistics at Sourceforge. TTA codec still popular in Russia and Japan. You can easily found TTA files on russian torrents, but there is no files in TAK or OptimFROG formats for example.Where did you get information about the popularity of codecs?

Recently, a TTA dev (Ald) has added it to the table again, but added an extra row with the feature "Password protection". I subsequently removed this, because it is only a minor feature that is supported by only one codec.

Again, you have removed the "Password protection" feature from table without discussing here, why? Please be patient. TTA codec has three significant features:

- Password protection;- Highest encoding speed;- Ultra low latency.

The current version of the table does not contain any of this.You have explained it by this way: "it's only a minor feature". Please note, that this is just your opinion. Many people in the world think otherwise. And yes, you are right, "Password protection" feature that is supported by only one codec.This information should be in the Lossless comparison table if you want to compare codecs correctly.

Which is the best lossless codec?

Again, you have removed the "Password protection" feature from table without discussing here, why? Please be patient.

Until such a feature has been discussed and there is some kind of consensus that it is important enough to signify a separate line in such a table, I think one should refrain from adding it. And if someone just adds it without discussion, I think the appropriate thing would be to revert the change, then discuss, and then if agreed upon, enter it.

And especially I would say this applies when a developer of one of the formats throws in a feature-line that is unique to their own product, based on their own assessment of the significance of the features of their own products. You are not by any means neutral, hm? ;-)

Again, you have removed the "Password protection" feature from table without discussing here, why?

Because it is a minor feature. Other (in my opinion more important) features, like MD5 checksumming, cuesheet support, having multiple encoding/decoding implementations, supporting 32-bit floats aren't listed either, because the table would become to large and therefore harder to read.

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TTA codec has three significant features:

- Password protection;- Highest encoding speed;- Ultra low latency

As said, I don't consider password protection a major feature, TTA hasn't got the highest encoding speed and for that low latency, I'd like to see some numbers in context, as I don't think it is unique in that sense.

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Many people in the world think otherwise.

No one reading this thread has agreed with you yet.

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This information should be in the Lossless comparison table if you want to compare codecs correctly.

If we include all information on features, the table gets too big. A line has to be drawn somewhere.

Which is the best lossless codec?

I think that password protection is a neat feature. Just because I think it is "neat" it doesn't mean it is significant enough.

Let me just for illustration point out that the zip format - PKWare's version, that is - has since 2007 supported WavPack as its Compression Method 97. There you go, password protection. If anyone cares.

And if anyone cares, .zip as audio format isn't that hard to implement. I do not know whether it is implemented in practice - those compression methods are not universally compatible, and I do not bother to check whether VLC (or fb2k for that matter) supports Compression Method 97.

And if anyone cares, WavPack-in-zip could even be mentioned in the text in the wiki. (WavPack in .zip container isn't that unlike whatever-in-Matroska, is it?)

Now is there anyone who thinks this is worth a line in an overview table?

Other (in my opinion more important) features, like MD5 checksumming, cuesheet support, having multiple encoding/decoding implementations, supporting 32-bit floats aren't listed either, because the table would become to large and therefore harder to read.

Lower latency of the compressor is achieved by fully adaptive coding algorithm, without buffering stage, which is required in many codecs for the preliminary analysis of the encoded block of input data. The size of the buffer completely determines the delay. The TTA codec algorithm uses a single buffer of 32 bits for the formation of entire bytes from a bit sequence of variable length codes at the codec output. The buffer of this size means nearly zero delay in the encoding process. The latency of the codec was measured by my colleagues and it's value is about 0.1 ms. Note, that this value is not for console version of the codec, because the console version has a big buffers for read-write operations.